Father Richard Rohr reflects on creation as sacred and alive with God’s presence:
Nature itself is the primary Bible. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, “What can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created.” The world itself is the primary locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth.
Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century theologian and Doctor of the Church, put it this way:
God brought things into being in order that God’s goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because God’s goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided. [1]
If we scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species, Homo sapiens, doesn’t appear until 11:59 PM on December 31. That means our written Bible and the church appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can’t believe that God would have had nothing to say until the last nanosecond. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, God has been revealing God’s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation. “God looked at everything God had made and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31). Everything is sacred!
Acknowledging the intrinsic value and beauty of creation, including the cosmos, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western and cultural Christians. In fact, we have often dismissed it by calling it animism or paganism. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species, and even then we didn’t have enough love to go around for all of humanity! God ended up looking quite miserly and inept, to be honest.
Listen instead to the Book of Wisdom, as I translate it:
How dull are all people who, from the things-that-are, have not been able to discover God-Who-Is, or by studying the good works have failed to recognize the Artist…. Through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author (13:1, 5)
All we have to do is walk outside and gaze at one leaf, long and lovingly, until we know, really know, that this leaf is a participation in the eternal being of God. It’s enough to create ecstasy! Our relationship to reality allows us to meet things center to center or subject to subject, inner dignity to inner dignity. For a true contemplative, a gratuitously falling green leaf will awaken awe and wonder just as much as a golden tabernacle in a cathedral.
References:
[1] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.47.1. Note: Edited for gender-neutral language referring to God.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, A New Cosmology: Nature as the First Bible (CAC Publishing, 2009). Available as MP3 audio download.
Graham Mansfield, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Just as bread, wine, and water reveal grace in sacrament, so too the natural world invites us to be relaxed enough to receive the abundance already present—where even a quiet day without fish becomes its own communion.
Story from Our Community:
I’ve felt moved to spend increasingly more time in the wilderness. It’s been intimidating but also filled with beauty, connection, and fresh air. The plants, birds, and animals feel familiar, and I try to learn their common and Latin names. This simple act has brought me surprising happiness and a sense of communion with creation. I return to work and family feeling more confident and optimistic. At my most daring, I slept out alone under the stars one warm night with no ground sheet or tent. The peace I felt upon waking has stayed with me.
—Elizabeth F.
